Some small businesses might fear that the use of crowdsourcing could be seen as a weakness, in that if you are an expert in a particular area, why do you need to ask for help from non-professionals?

That worry sure has not held back major international companies from advertising for out-of-house advice. The Peugeot division of France-based PSA/Peugeot-Citroen, one of the world's largest carmakers, holds an annual car design contest. sure look familiar when you compare it to models Peugeot is unveiling today, especially the .

The U.K.-based Guardian newspaper asked its readers a couple of years ago to help scrutinize the expense reports that Britain's prime ministers filed. Once Guardian created an interface on its Website with which readers could communicate what they found, over 20,000 readers were able to dig up information from 70,000 pages of documents in less than a week that journalists from major newspapers were unable to do. resulted in the disclosure of questionable expenses that Britain's prime minters were charging with taxpayer money.

Putting Facebook Questions to your customers is certainly not a bad idea. But the Peugeot and Guardian examples show how crowdsourcing can serve as a creative, powerful, and ultimately fun tool to gather information or to generate excitement about what you are doing. A small business obviously does not have the same resources that these two European companies have, but that is the point: The crowd is the power source.

Bruce covers tech trends in the United States and Europe.