Your method of learnings is flawed.
The specific lesson to be learned here is that they changed their view on the solution for a max-flow problem from a serial probing algorithm to a parallel electrical probing solution and lowered the time-complexity.
The general lesson to be learned here is that they changed their view on the solution for a massive parallel multiple choice problem from a serial probing algorithm to a parallel probing solution and lowered the time-complexity.
The actual implementation is uninteresting and will always vary according to domain and optimization, but the intuition lesson is always a valid tool that we now have. And in hindsight this was a really obvious solution, carouse one should try all the routes and identify the bottlenecks.
Food for thought, single cpu core vs GPGPU.