The present work aims to analyze two school experiences, awarded and recognized as innovative, seeking to identify their characteristics from the perspective of management and teachers. For this, it was sought to understand the characteristics that lead these schools to perceive themselves as innovative when applying for innovation awards, to analyze the perception of the management and teachers about innovation and to understand the concept of innovation adopted by these institutions. The theoretical foundation is based on the contemporary debate about the concept of educational innovation. As a methodology, it was decided to carry out two case studies, one for each school researched, the procedures adopted in the case study were the analysis of documents and interviews. The results indicate that the schools surveyed understand educational innovation as daily practices, which count on the involvement and participation of the entire school community, and that break with the traditional paradigm of management and pedagogical practices, still very present in Brazilian education.