How six companies have flourished during the recession.

Rising profits are always heartening. But rising profits in the midst of economic calamity, when employment and GDP are tanking, consumer demand is falling, and companies like Citigroup, Time Warner, and Motorola are reporting quarterly losses in the billions of dollars—that kind of success is the sweet nectar of the corporate gods. As we come out of one of the worst quarters in American history, what's emerging is the picture of a handful of winners, companies that managed, through luck, planning, or cunning, to see their profits go up in the final quarter of 2008.

Call them the Survivors. How did they do it? The Big Money asked Praveen Nayyar, a professor of operations management and corporate strategy expert at New York University's Stern School of Business, to walk us through what these companies did right.

Of course, like a kiss, a quarter is just a quarter—sweet but fleeting, and not the kind of thing you'd want to build any long-term predictions around. But in this economy, you've got to take your good news where you can get it. So here's how they did it.

Right Place, Right Time: Amazon and Netflix

Across the country, retailers have been groaning about a lack of customers, forcing many into bankruptcy. Evidence suggests that Americans are still consuming plenty, but they're relying more on Netflix and Amazon.

Amazon saw net sales increase by 18 percent last quarter, and profit jumped by 9 percent. Netflix, the company that made mail cool again, added 718,000 customers in the last quarter of 2008, for a total of nearly 10 million overall. Even better, according to the AP, the cost of each of those subscribers fell by 23 percent over the same period the year before. The result: Netflix saw its revenue go up 19 percent and its profit increase a full 45 percent.