The sentiments expressed in the conclusion of Harel's article Statecharts in the Making: A Personal Account[3] really jumped out at me last year. When I read your blog post, I got the impression you are reaching related conclusions:
"If asked about the lessons to be learned from the statecharts story, I would definitely put tool support for executability and experience in real-world use at the top of the list. Too much computer science research on languages, methodologies, and semantics never finds its way into the real world, even in the long term, because these two issues do not get sufficient priority.
One of the most interesting aspects of this story is the fact that the work was not done in an academic tower, inventing something and trying to push it down the throats of real-world engineers. It was done by going into the lion's den, working with the people in industry. This is something I would not hesitate to recommend to young researchers; in order to affect the real world, one must go there and roll up one's sleeves. One secret is to try to get a handle on the thought processes of the engineers doing the real work and who will ultimately use these ideas and tools. In my case, they were the avionics engineers, and when I do biological modeling, they are biologists. If what you come up with does not jibe with how they think, they will not use it. It's that simple."
[1] http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers.html
[2] http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/LiberatingPro...
[3] http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/papers/Statecharts.H...