Contrary to conventional wisdom, "people have it wrong when they say 'cash is king,'" asserts Scott Berger, tax principal with Kaufman Rossin & Co., a half-century-old accounting firm in Miami. "Managing cash is king today."

Experts say one positive aspect of the economic downturn is that small and midsize companies are starting to perform detailed cash-flow analyses, giving them the ability to anticipate and react to cash shortfalls faster. "When cash is flowing in, you don't have to plan that much," Berger points out. "Now you do."

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A difficult economic environment can present a great time to expand your business. "There is less slack in the system and less loose money lying around," says Rita Gunther McGrath, an associate professor at Columbia Business School and author of Discovery Driven Growth. "But the positive is that customers' normal behavior has been shaken up, which creates a lot of opportunities if you act smartly."

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Even with millions of components moving through its systems, Wellborn Cabinets, a 50-year-old cabinetmaker, gets the right component to the right dealer 99.9% of the time. This impressive rate of fast, accurate order fulfillment stems in part from an integrated system that removes errors. The company tracks all material through its plants by bar codes and puts up displays measuring how well workers are meeting fulfillment goals. When first instituted, those metrics resulted in an immediate 20% boost in worker productivity.

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For some people, opportunity knocks. In Rick Alden's case, it was sent to voicemail.

Alden missed an important cell-phone call while sitting on a ski lift in Utah because he couldn't hear the ring through his MP3 headphone. Then he noticed the same thing happen to people traveling by train and subway in Tokyo and London.

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