More and more firms are establishing strategic alliances and networks in an attempt to acquire the necessary resources to attend to increasing market requirements, and, thus,create sustainable competitive advantage. Considering this context, the present study aims at analyzing the tendencies of leading firms in Brazil with respect to their strategic alliances and networks. It is part of a wider research which objective is to develop and test conceptual tools for strategic analyses that can contribute to the decision-making of executives in Brazil related to companies that operate in strategic networks of alliances. The study was carried out by way of an extensive literature review as well as a survey about the perceptions of the CEOs in 230 leading firms in the country regarding their strategic alliances and networks. It confirmed that a great majority of the leading firms in Brazil have indeed established strategic alliances and that approximately one third of them also operate in strategic networks. It also helped revealing a deficiency in a large number of firms that could constitute a significant barrier to the effectiveness of their alliances and networks: the lack of measures and indicators regarding alliance and network performance, especially with respect to intangible benefits, such as social and informational capital that they can potentially offer.