The people you know can push you forward. They can also hold you back. When the time comes, you may need to cut some ties in order to innovate, and be able to lead your employees to do the same.

Frans Johansson wrote in The Medici Effect about the importance of breaking away from your network. The idea is that exposure to new people and new ways of thinking is important for you to be creative. Staying with your colleagues and connections can keep you immersed in the same ideas and perspectives. Even if the people in your network are pretty creative themselves, Johansson suggests that exposure to people in new fields can spark ideas in you and provide new opportunities for synergy between people with different expertise.

Broadening your network can be fairly easy. Social networking sites can point you toward people with interests you find intriguing. Social and professional groups offer opportunities for face-to-face connections. MeetUp groups are often specific enough that you know you are finding people who are talking about something new. Taking a new job, of course, totally immerses you in a large new network. It is easy enough to seek out people whose interests and talents can complement, and enhance, your own.

The tricky part may be cutting yourself off from your old network. It seems downright rude to say “you can’t help me anymore, so I am moving on.” Since you have a finite amount of time, though, you should at least be prioritizing your interactions, because it is hard otherwise to expand your network if you don’t shed some people along the way. Friendships that are important to you are relationships you should maintain, but “Facebook friends” whom you do not actually know can probably be allowed to drift away. If you move to a new job, you may want to keep contacts at your old one, but do not go running back to the old office every week for lunch. As you start going to a new happy hour, stop going to the old ones, or you will end up with liver damage. Not sure which people you should keep? Try going a week without calling people and see who calls you…those may be the ones to hang onto while letting others go.

New ideas are often facilitated by new surroundings, and “people” are more important that new furniture and new paint. Maintaining and improving your creativity may require you to “redecorate” those surroundings every now and then. You and your employees can benefit by jumping into new networks and seeing how they fan your creative flames.