[citation needed] A precursor to the Center for Innovation, the SPARC Lab,[4] was created in the Department of Medicine with a staff of two.
The SPARC Innovation Program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is widely recognized as the first design-based research and development laboratory for health services.
LaRusso and Brennan, both avid runners, imagined a space where new ideas might be thoroughly tested before implementation within the clinical practice.
The two believed that its insular protection from the demands of the practice would improve the rate of innovation in health service delivery.
Consequently, they recruited Dr. Alan Kendall Duncan, Jennifer Dusso, Dr. Prathibha Varkey, and later Dr. Victor Montori to realize this vision, with designers (widely recognized as some of the first embedded designers working within a healthcare institution on healthcare experience & delivery): Maggie Breslin, Matt Maleska, Christine Janae - Leoniak, and J. Paul Neeley.
In 2002, the group engaged the design firm IDEO to help envision the concept of a physical laboratory for service innovation.