You don't seem to have any understanding of how Android works. The buck does stop at vendors since they are the ones who ship OS updates to consumers.

Vendors don't prioritize updates because their customers don't understand enough to make this part of their purchasing decision, so there is little incentive for them to spend resources on it.

Minimizing this major problem doesn't help.

And - instead of saying 'think outside the box' - why not actually contribute some out of the box thinking?