Psychological Ownership in AI-Augmented Venture Creation: Behavioral Implications for the Entrepreneurial Pivot

Abstract

Research on the entrepreneurial pivot—that is, a startup's change in strategic direction as a response to negative market feedback or changing conditions—has established that a founder's capacity to reorient a venture is constrained by identity dynamics: because founders come to experience their ventures as extensions of themselves, the psychological ownership they hold over the venture concept shapes whether, when, and how readily they change course. We problematize this account for a setting in which founders increasingly delegate important aspects of venture creation to generative artificial intelligence systems. Drawing on the theory of psychological ownership and the conjoined agency framework, we argue that AI-augmented venture creation decouples psychological ownership from the pathways through which it is ordinarily grounded. We theorize two divergent forms—diluted and fragile ownership—and trace the opposing consequences of each on how founders manage and experience strategic change in early-stage ventures.