Nairobi, June 3 -- One of the most successful films from the 1990s was the Usual Suspects, a crime thriller that introduced the world to Keyser Soze, one of cinema's most iconic characters.

Both crime lord Soze and the inspiration for the film - a line from the police chief played by Claude Rains in the film noir classic Casablanca - have become synonymous with the futility of unquestioning reliance on blind orthodoxy.

For anyone facing an intractable challenge, rounding up the usual suspects is now shorthand for being seen to do something which everyone accepts will inevitably fail.

I was reminded of this at a recent meeting with a potential unicorn - a billion-dollar AI diagnostics business under pressure from investors to make strat...