Companies (and their regulators) have frequently been shamed into doing what they should have in the first place by independent critics. Nader and automobiles as previously detailed, Rachel Carson and Silent Spring (ultimately resulting in the Clean Air and Clean Water acts and the EPA, created by Republican president Richard Nixon). Upton Sinclair and food processing.
1. Elon Musk is not a whistleblower. He didn't bring this issue to light at the risk of persecution by Boeing or the airlines.
2. He's also not an "independent critic" - he's a entrepreneur who runs an aerospace company that competes with Boeing's space activities, another company that makes cars powered using batteries, and has no history as a critic of aircraft design.
3. I'm not from the US, so I hadn't heard of Upton Sinclair, but Carson's and Nader's motivations for what they did came from a desire to protect the natural environment and promote social justice respectively. I don't think that comparable motivations can be ascribed to Elon Musk in this case.
Musk definitely has a horse in the race. Still, he's independent to the extent that he's beholden to neither Boeing nor the NTSB/FAA. He's also critiquing Boeing on a specific technology on which he has substantial expertise and experience: lithium-ion battery storage. Including experience with aerospace implementations of that technology.
My point was that your assertion that working within the system is sufficient to effect change is demonstrably false.
As for businesses competing not only on dollars but mindshare and technological direction -- isn't that what the free market system is all about? Directed self-interest?
Wikipedia's Whistleblower article notes a few other interesting cases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers