The importance of analyzing the innovative culture as a competitive strategy in public universities is that an innovative culture enables progress so that the universities can advance with the changes generated in the environment in order to anticipate future trends, and to achieve maximum performance of all resources within organizations, whether public or private. This article is descriptive and transactional, not experimental. The study population is 52 key informants and information was collected through a survey with a questionnaire of 20 closed questions. The Crombach method yielded a value of 0.94, resulting in a considerable reliability instrument. We designed the questionnaire to learn about the innovative culture as a strategy that is used to achieve the competitiveness of higher education institutions while taking into account the elements that are a part of that culture.