The article answers the questions: What are the practices applied by service organizations to facilitate the construction and development of their innovation capacity? Do financial units and public higher education institutions in Colombia, apply the practices? The problem is based on studies of de-funding of Higher Education (HE) and the need to innovate in revenue. The HEI demand the ability to respond to the dynamics of the environment, quality requirements, coverage, technology etc. Through a systematic review of the literature This study characterizes practices identified in scientific articles that enhanced the capacity of innovation in service organizations and performs a diagnosis of the percentage of HEI that apply. It is evident from the study that the level of autonomy of HEIs influences the practices implementation