As with the increasingly prominent influence of think tanks on government policy around the world, Chinese government have attached great importance and support to the construction of domestic think tanks. American think tanks which not only started early and were numerous, but also formed a group of top think tanks with high international influence is a good reference for Chinese think tanks' development. This paper consider the most important thing of American top think tanks is the production process of intelligence products from the perspective of information resources, choose Rand corporation, Brookings Institution as well as Hoover Institution which can stand for the top of American think tanks on the basis of different affiliation, and come to a conclusion that there are several key process consist of the procedure, that is topics selection, data collection, research analysis and transformation of knowledge to intelligence. Clearly analyzing these key process and examples in order to provide a reference for Chinese construction of new think tanks.