Today the Higher Education Institutions are immersed in a world of constant change, and it is necessary to adapt to this environment with skill and speed. This has forced universities to adopt practices that create or strengthen their capacity to innovate, based on the determination of factors that influence it positively. This study is centered on the implementation of the Innovation Model of Higher Education (MIES) prepared by Villa, Escotet and Goni (2007), adapted to the university context. This model allows Higher Education Institutions to diagnose their innovative capacity. This model is developed in the field of academic innovation, which is defined as the organizational competence of institutions to respond to the environment quickly enough, to cover existing needs and to anticipate future ones. As a case study, MIES was applied to Ecuadorian universities where the perception of different university actors was obtained and the factors driving innovation in this context were determined as a reference for the application of strategies promoting innovation.