HR professionals must become 'innovators' if they are to survive the sea of change said the CIPD's keynote speaker and strategy guru Gary Hamel.

Delegates were told that the problem centres on the pace of this change. The challenge is for businesses to build the capacity to move forward before the case for change becomes desperately obvious.

The yawning realisation, he said, is that many businesses don't wake up to what is happening around them until it is too late, profits dip and customers are lost before action is taken.

"Success has never been more fragile and as change accelerates we are becoming more ignorant," Hamel commented.

HR must champion 'innovation' if their organisations are to be successful.

The three-pronged solution he suggests is revolution, renewal and resilience. Companies must continually reinvent themselves he argued and develop a capacity for continuous reconstruction.

This quest for resilience should be the focus of every HR professional. Strategy dies he said if they are replicated, supplanted, exhausted or eviscerated.

With 'change' buzz words filling the auditorium HR delegates were told that there: "Is no better time to be in HR."