(FORTUNE Small Business) – Pop artist Andy Warhol once said, "Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art." For the companies that have been able to not only survive but thrive in these turbulent economic times, that's even more true. The Nasdaq is languishing around 1,650, about where it stood four years ago. Corporate profits have been in full-scale retreat, and accounting scandals are landing on the front pages of the business section like meteorites: Enron, Andersen, Tyco, Xerox--boom, boom, boom, boom. To paint your way through this mess, you'd better be Cezanne or van Gogh.

And that's precisely the caliber of manager we've found. The 100 companies you'll read about on the following pages all posted noteworthy growth over the past three years, and more impressive, they grew across a few different criteria. This is the second year we've run the FSB 100, and we've kept our methodology the same as last year's. With the help of Zacks Investment Research, we looked at public U.S. companies on the major stock exchanges that had less than $200 million in annual revenue. Next, we ranked those companies by earnings growth, revenue growth, and stock return (meaning price appreciation plus dividends) from 1999 through 2001. Finally, we averaged the rankings to come up with the final order.

Even a quick glance at the findings turns up some surprises. For starters, this year's list includes 65 new companies--an eyebrow-raising amount of turnover. Of the top ten companies, only three managed to make it back to those heights: Dynacq, 4Kids Entertainment, and CompuDyne. (For more on the high turnover between this year and last, check out "Where Are They Now?" on page 58; for more on CompuDyne, see "Safe and Sound," page 46.)

Total revenues for this year's crop rose 149%, to $9.4 billion, but earnings slid 62%, to just over $1 billion. The lagging earnings can be explained partly by write-offs--even some successful companies had to take one-time charges to clear out inventory and clean up their profit-and-loss statements--and partly by the number of low-margin energy companies (13 this year) replacing high-margin software manufacturers (13 last year). Oil and gas exploration requires a lot of capital and man-hours, and those companies traditionally post lower margins than other industries.

What's more surprising about this year's FSB 100 is the number of tech companies that made it--19. Most big corporations have drastically reduced their tech spending, but apparently they haven't cut it all the way back to zero. Take our No. 1 company, NYFIX, based in Stamford, Conn., which makes stock-trading software. Even though the equity markets have been in a prolonged slump, with low trading volume, NYFIX decided to release NYFIX Millennium in September 2001, a network that allows institutional traders to buy and sell equities off the major markets. The new system was enthusiastically backed by some of the biggest firms on Wall Street, including Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers, because it tapped into a healthy flow of existing trades on the order-routing network those banks had long used. (Competing systems have to create order flow from scratch.) The system was an immediate hit, and volume on it soared in the first week, boosting NYFIX's 2001 revenues 75%.

Health-care companies were also well represented--15 of them appear on the list, led by Zoll Medical, a consistent presence (finishing No. 11 both years). The Burlington, Mass., company makes defibrillators--portable machines that can resuscitate heart-attack patients and are becoming standard safety equipment on airlines, in police cars, and even in shopping malls. Given the aging U.S. population, the American Heart Association estimates that defibrillators could save about 50,000 people each year, and some experts speculate that the devices will soon become as ubiquitous as fire extinguishers. In March, Zoll received FDA approval for its newest system, Zoll AED Plus, a machine that comes with step-by-step illustrations (it looks almost like a Fisher-Price toy), so you don't need any training to use it and potentially save a life. The launch has jolted Zoll's stock, sending it up 50% in the past 12 months, and boosted earnings, which are on pace for another record-setting year.

On the lighter side, Pixar Animation Studios came in No. 39. With Steve Jobs as its CEO and digital demiurge, Pixar has made just four movies so far--Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug's Life, and Monsters, Inc.--but it has taken in more than $1.7 billion in global ticket sales. Pixar's revenue over the past three years is up an annualized 96%, and that would be even higher if not for a complicated deal that gives Disney part of Pixar's sales. Signed years ago, the deal stipulates that Disney and Pixar split both the production costs and the movies' profits. It was originally designed as a hedge, given that Pixar's all-digital movies are expensive to produce and winners in Hollywood are often tough to predict. But in light of its success, Pixar is now reportedly looking to renegotiate that deal and cover its own production costs, using Disney only for distribution. If it can rework the deal and manages to keep coming up with winning movies, expect Pixar to make the list next year as well.

Bob Stiller, founder and CEO of Green Mountain Coffee (No. 19), is one of the least likely repeat appearances, considering his start. Stiller's first venture, which he launched while working a low-level data-entry job, was E-Z Wider rolling papers--a decent company and a known brand among a certain smoky corner of the population. (For the record, he says he never indulged.) Stiller later sold that business for about $3 million, and then got into the coffee business. But the mid-1990s were not kind. First, there was Green Mountain's weak public stock offering in 1993, after which shares traded over the counter for years. Then Stiller made an ill-fated attempt at retail stores. Starbucks proved too formidable a competitor, so he packed up his 12 locations in 1998 and focused on selling directly to convenience stores, supermarkets, and offices. (We can vouch that the coffee's good--we drink it in the Time & Life Building in New York City, where FSB is published.) The new wholesale blend seems to be working. Earnings have grown at an annualized 138% clip over three years, and despite a recent slide in the stock price, it has more than tripled in that time.

If Andy Warhol is right, and business success really is a kind of fascinating art, then consider the following pages a gallery tour of some of the best recent works we've found, all executed in the medium of small business.