In diversity-oriented synthesis, considerable thought is needed in. planning a strategy that achieves the objective of getting a large number of molecules with the following attributes. (i) Molecules should be small in size, where pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties can be optimized to give leads to the process of drug discovery. (ii) The molecules should have structural complexity, which can be partly achieved using pairs of reactions, such that the product of one reaction is a substrate for the second reaction. Such a pair of reactions then becomes a subset of a series of complexity-generating tandem reactions.

(iii) The molecules should have large rings. This is difficult, because long chains, of acyclic precursors achieve many conformations that are not suitable for ring closure, so that acyclic precursors having conformational features suiting to ring closure need to be designed. (iv) The molecules should have structural diversity, which is achieved by three different methods: first, the use of different building blocks at different stages of synthesis, second, the use of altered stereochemistry to produce stereoisomers, and third, the use of branching reaction pathways that produce diverse arrays of skeletal atoms (scaffolds), upon which building blocks can be attached.