I don't understand it either, but I do think it reflects what academia really feels like

and I imagine the closer the academic research is to real world industry uses, the more obstacles there will be (due to 'trade secrecy', and the like)

I think it's the metaphor for spending your research career banging your head against a wall (in this case - literally)

A maze can be thought of a series of binary choices, so you'd get a different distribution if you spawn particles from successful ones than from a random walk in 2D. However, I don't think this gets you any better a model of scientific discovery than existing statistical models of combinatorial innovations (https://www.newthingsunderthesun.com/pub/2elwp33m/release/2#...), and it may be the same as some others.

The walls are obstacles for moving on. Like storage and transport are obstacles for solar energy. But once we find solutions, we hit a next barrier. They can be large (ie not so much changes) or small (we get a series of follow up innovations, because energy has just becomes much cheaper and more abundant).