Construct · 4 names · 5 citations
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● jangle · one construct, many names Nearest construct by meaningentrepreneurial intentioncompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to entrepreneurial exit is entrepreneurial intention.
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DeTienne's 2010 Entrepreneurial exit as a critical component of the entrepreneurial process defined entrepreneurial exit as the process by which the founders of privately held firms leave the firm they helped to create, removing themselves in varying degrees from the primary ownership and decision-making structure. On this reading exit is the closing stage of the entrepreneurial process, as consequential as founding, and it centres on the person of the founder rather than on the fate of the company. This meaning fixes the referent on the entrepreneur's own departure, which is distinct from the harvest route that carries value out, from the question of whether the firm itself survives or dies, and from a founder's mere plan to leave one day.[1]
When exit is scoped as a strategy, the question becomes which route the founder takes out. DeTienne, McKelvie, and Chandler's 2015 Making sense of entrepreneurial exit strategies sorted these routes into three broad types: financial harvest through an initial public offering or a sale to another firm, stewardship through family succession or a sale to employees or managers who will preserve the business, and voluntary cessation through discontinuance or liquidation. Wennberg and DeTienne's 2014 What do we really mean when we talk about 'exit'? review stressed that these routes differ so much that treating them as one outcome hides more than it reveals. This meaning fixes the referent on the mechanism of departure and the value it does or does not realise, which is a narrower question than the founder's separation in general, than whether the firm lives on, or than the founder's stated plan.[3][5]
Wennberg, Wiklund, DeTienne, and Cardon's 2010 Reconceptualizing entrepreneurial exit drew the sharpest line on this page, between the exit of the entrepreneur and the exit of the firm. They crossed two dimensions, whether the firm was performing well or poorly and whether it was sold on or shut down, to yield four routes: harvest sale and harvest liquidation for strong firms, and distress sale and distress liquidation for weak ones. The key correction is that a founder can leave a thriving company, and a failing company can dissolve while its founder stays to the end, so exit-as-the-person-leaving and exit-as-the-firm-ending are not the same event. This meaning insists on separating who leaves from what happens to the business, a distinction that the broad label of exit tends to blur.[2]
DeTienne and Cardon's 2012 Impact of founder experience on exit intentions scoped exit not as an event that has happened but as an intention held in advance: the route a founder anticipates taking when they eventually leave. They found that founders' background, including prior entrepreneurial and industry experience and their age and education, shapes which exit they expect, well before any exit occurs. This meaning fixes the referent on a forward-looking plan rather than a realised departure, so it can be measured in founders who have not exited at all. It is therefore distinct from an actual founder departure, from the route ultimately taken, and from the firm's ultimate fate, none of which the plan determines on its own.[4]
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