Arthur H. Cole: Rethinking Entrepreneurship in Society

Abstract This article offers a biographical reappraisal of Arthur H. Cole (1889–1974) as a field creator and architect of business history’s mid-century ambitions. It traces how institutional position and financial security enabled Cole to develop a research program for entrepreneurial history by redefining its evidentiary base, organizing it as a collective and interdisciplinary endeavor, and articulating an analytical framework for it. The article argues that Cole advanced two arguments that continue to provoke the field. First, he promoted the study of entrepreneurship without heroes, resisting great-firm and great-man narratives by treating entrepreneurial change primarily as a knowledge problem. Second, he sought to align levels of analysis, tracing the entrepreneurial function from micro-level decision-making through meso-level interfirm ecologies to macro-level social legitimacy. To communicate this complex agenda, Cole often theorized in metaphors, notably the “entrepreneurial stream,” that helped his ideas travel even when his synthesis proved difficult to canonize.