Dear Mario,

I believe that should be given to establish some indicators to measure or evaluate the innovation capacity of institutions of higher education. This can be achieved through a systematic monitoring mechanism, consisting of an organized set of interrelated elements and to assess the innovative potential of the organization, through the main features that give a more complete and objective picture of the innovative effort . Some indicators could include:

Research and Development (R & D) Internal

Research and Development (R & D) External

Acquisition of machinery and equipment

Purchasing Hardware

Acquisition Software

Acquisition of  technology

Impact indicators

Quality indicators

From this process you could build indexes (e.g. index generating ideas, Effectiveness Index ideas, prototype implementation rate, index of publications with impact factor, etc.) that could be categorized, for example, a faculty determined as follows:

Innovative School No: they not performed any research and technological innovation during the year.

Potentially Innovative Faculty: conducted research and technological innovation during the reference year before but abandoned efforts to achieve results, or continued to conduct such activities achieving results, but expectations that were expected.

Innovative Faculty:

conducted the research and innovation effectively, concrete results, that is, who managed to produce technological innovations.

Also keep in mind that innovation will not only be of a technological nature.

please see: 

http://docs.politicascti.net/documents/Doc%2008%20-%20capacitacion%20lugones%20ES.pdf

https://revistas.upb.edu.co/index.php/cienciasestrategicas/article/viewFile/2658/2308

A robust framework for measuring innovation performance was proposed on the following themes: Financial performance; Technology development; Knowledge utilisation; Exploitation of knowledge stocks; Process improvement by Adams et. al., 2008.

These were further explored for various industrial domains in terms of the following "measurement themes": 

Timeliness (was the innovative step "first to market"/ a follower?);

Business performance (Were new customers acquired/ new market segments entered as a result of it);

Financial performance (how much of increase i sales/ profitability could be attributed to innovation);

Commercialisation (were products/ services delivered/ fresh licensing done);

Innovativeness (how many new products/ services were added in the year)

See http://moemesto.ru/alz59/file/3939614/download/2.ProposalforMeasuresofFirmLevelInnovationPerformancein12SectorsofUKIndustryNeelyetal.pdf

I am sure you will get several pointers for your organization.

This is a great topic that can be studied at different levels, including individuals, teams, organizations, nations, etc. If you are conduction a qualitative study, it might be useful to consider innovation at all these different levels.

There is an excellent recent review paper you can use to develop your qualitative study:

Anderson, Ptocnik, and Zhou (2014), "Innovation and Creativity in Organizations:.."Journal of Management, 40 (5), 1297-1333.

Use researchgate to see how researchers are performing.