Differentiation may refer to:

Business

Differentiation (economics) In economics and marketing, product differentiation (or simply differentiation) is the process of distinguishing a product (business), product or Service (economics), service from others to make it more Demand (economics), attractive to a particul ...

, the process of making a product different from other similar products *

Product differentiation In economics and marketing, product differentiation (or simply differentiation) is the process of distinguishing a product or service from others to make it more attractive to a particular target market. This involves differentiating it from c ...

, in marketing * Differentiated service, a service that varies with the identity of the consumer or the context in which the service is used

Science, technology, and mathematics

Biology and medicine

Cellular differentiation Cellular differentiation is the process in which a stem cell changes from one type to a differentiated one. Usually, the cell changes to a more specialized type. Differentiation happens multiple times during the development of a multicellula ...

, in biology * ''Differentiation'' (journal), a peer-reviewed academic journal covering cell differentiation and cell development *

Developmental biology Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of Regeneration (biology), regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and di ...

, the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop * Differentiation therapy, a cancer treatment in which malignant cells are encouraged to differentiate into more mature forms using pharmacological agents

Geology

Igneous differentiation In geology, igneous differentiation, or magmatic differentiation, is an umbrella term for the various processes by which magmas undergo bulk chemical change during the partial melting process, cooling, emplacement, or eruption. The sequence of ...

, in geology *

Planetary differentiation In planetary science, planetary differentiation is the process by which the chemical elements of a planetary body accumulate in different areas of that body, due to their physical or chemical behavior (e.g. density and chemical affinities). The pr ...

, in planetary science and geology

Social sciences

, the process of making a product different from other similar products * Differentiation (ethnography), the invention of ostensible differences between cultures *

Differentiation (linguistics) Differentiation in semantics is defined by Löbner (2002) as a meaning shift reached by "adding concepts to the original concepts". His example is ''James Joyce is hard to understand'', where ''understand'' is differentiated from "perceiving the me ...

, in semantics, a meaning shift reached by "adding concepts to the original concepts" *

Differentiation (sociology) In system theory, differentiation is the tendency of subsystems in a modern society to increase the complexity of that society. Each subsystem can make different connections with other subsystems, and this leads to more variation within the sy ...

, a feature of modern society, and way of dealing with complexity *

Differentiated instruction Differentiated instruction and assessment, also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation, is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing all students within their diverse classroom comm ...

, in education *

Inductive reasoning aptitude Inductive reasoning aptitude (also called differentiation or inductive learning ability) measures how well a person can identify a pattern within a large amount of data. It involves applying the rules of logic when inferring general principles fr ...

, in psychology

Other uses in science, technology, and mathematics

Differentiation (mathematics) In mathematics, the derivative is a fundamental tool that quantifies the sensitivity to change of a function's output with respect to its input. The derivative of a function of a single variable at a chosen input value, when it exists, is t ...