A joint venture is a shared undertaking between parties who pool resources for a defined purpose while remaining separate businesses. It may be incorporated as a distinct company or exist purely as a contractual arrangement with no separate entity at all, and the label is used for both. Nothing defines it, and that matters more here than for most terms, because the name carries no content: everything determining your position comes from the agreement. Who controls which decisions, what supermajorities apply, what happens when the board deadlocks, how either side exits and at what valuation, who owns intellectual property contributed at the start and created during the venture, what non-compete survives afterwards. Two arrangements called joint ventures can allocate all of these in opposite directions.
Why this entry carries no source list. This lexicon cites an official primary source wherever one exists and says plainly where none does. No body defines this term: it is commercial vocabulary, and what it means in any particular deal is whatever the document says. Citing a bank’s product page, an insurer’s brochure or a consultancy’s explainer would dress one firm’s usage as a general rule. The paragraph above therefore ends by naming what to read instead of the word.