Think tank is also called brain enterprise, think tank group or think tank, think tank organization and consulting team. Refers to consulting and research institutions specializing in development research. It brings together experts and scholars from various disciplines and uses their wisdom and talents to provide satisfactory or optimized solutions for the development of social economy and other fields. It is an indispensable part of modern leadership management system. Its main task is to provide consultation, make suggestions for decision makers, judge management and put forward various designs; Feedback information, follow up the investigation and study of the implementation plan, and feed back the operation results to the decision makers for rectification; Make a diagnosis, study the causes of the problem according to the current situation, and find the crux of the problem; Forecast the future, use various methods from different angles, and put forward various forecasting schemes for decision makers to choose.

According to the definition of "China Think Tank Report 20 13" published by the Think Tank Research Center of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in February 20 14, think tanks mainly refer to professional research institutions that take public policies as research objects, influence government decision-making as research objectives, take public interests as research orientation and take social responsibility as research criteria.

From the organizational form and institutional attributes, think tanks can be public research institutions with government background (official think tanks) or private research institutions without government background or quasi-government background (private think tanks); It can be a for-profit research institution or a non-profit institution.